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Category: Human Rights

In a recent interview with Fox News, Thor Halvorssen was asked about his views regarding socialism and how it relates to basic human rights. Halvorssen is with the Human Rights Foundation and is well versed in both of the topics at hand.

Halvorssen is first asked why he believes socialism is a violation of basic human rights. To clarify, Halvorssen explains that countries can encompass human rights while also having socialist aspects to their governments, using countries such as Norway and Denmark as examples. According to Halvorssen, the problems comes when socialism is being used as a mask under authoritarian governments and leaders. These types of governments claim they are trying to help the people however, they turn around and use socialism as form of power to loot the country.

The Fox News anchor goes on to express her concern of Bernie Sanders supporters not knowing what socialism is and ask Thor Halvorssen to explain what the true definition is. Halvorssen answers by saying that people can use a number of definitions when defining socialism and that it does not necessarily contradict democracy and human rights.

The interview takes a quick turn when Halvorssen (facebook.com) is asked what his problem is with existing socialist countries. Halvorssen mentions the violation of free markets and then, to the interviewers surprise, claims that he has made the largest allowable donation to the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When asked to elaborate, Halvorssen says that the Democratic front runner, Hillary Clinton, has taking millions of dollars from dictators around the world.

It is Thor Halvorssen’s belief that a candidate who accepts money from dictators is much more dangerous than one who is a democratic socialist. Halvorssen thinks that democratic socialism can exist if there is “rule of law” and that there is only a problem when an authoritarian dictator steps in.

Thor’s Halvorssen’s defense of Bernie Sanders seems to be something that the interviewer and news channel did not expect. What originally seemed like a segment meant to belittle Sanders quickly turned into one justifying his democratic socialist views.